Developing from the field. Shifting design processes and roles between makers and practitioners around research tools development within an interdisciplinary research lab.
Résumé
Software design and development within interdisciplinary research teams is a specific activity which closely associates makers and practitioners in the equipment of experimental research methods and practices. This closeness allows practitioners to tackle research endeavours’ specific requirements, such as understanding the methodological assumptions encoded within the tools. It also induces a specific relationship between “makers” and their publics of “users” : a non-commercial, situated and case-based crafting process, implying shifting roles and complex decision making. How does this peculiar context affect the design and valorization practices around open research tools and their evolution ? What are the benefits and difficulties of such settings, in terms of work organization, pedagogical approaches, and scientific methodology ? What can be shared for other contexts such as activism or journalism ? Grounding on the presentation of several case studies of research tools’ design and development elaborated at the médialab of Sciences Po, this talk will offer an account of how an interdisciplinary research environment affects and dialogs with established methods of design (“participative design”, “user experience research”), development (“agile methods”), and tool valorization and socialization.